Yttrium oxide based articles and articles that have yttrium oxide based coatings are frequently used in semiconductor processing. When yttrium oxide based articles and articles with yttrium oxide based coatings are exposed to fluorine plasma chemistries during plasma etch processing, the yttrium oxide reacts with the fluorine and forms a yttrium fluoride. The conversion of the yttrium oxide into the yttrium fluoride during plasma etch processing is accompanied by a volume expansion of up to 60%, which causes stress and/or blistering to occur at a surface of the article. The stress and/or blistering are causes of particle defects on processed substrates.
Furthermore, new articles or recently cleaned articles generally have a different material composition at a surface than used articles that have not recently been cleaned. The different surface composition of these articles can cause processing results such as etch rate to vary depending on a state of the articles. Accordingly, after a new article is created and placed into a chamber and after a used article has been cleaned and placed into a chamber, the chamber is seasoned to cause the material composition of the surface to become similar to the surface composition that develops after use of the article. To season the chamber, one or more processes are run in the chamber without product in the chamber for a predetermined amount of time. During the seasoning process (also referred to as a recovery process), the chamber is unavailable to process product.